Short Fiction, Leonid Andreyev [good e books to read .TXT] 📗

villa circled the outskirts of the town, through a lane called Kanatnaja alley, where factory hands and their families lived, crowded by all sorts of miserable beings from the city⁠—some in wretched tumble-down huts, and some in two-story brick tenements of barrack-like uniformity. The Governor would gladly have bowed if he had seen anyone; but the street was empty, as though it were late at night⁠—not even the children about. Only one little lad appeared for a moment behind a fence, among the red leaves of a rowan-tree, but even he slid hastily from the trunk and hid in the gateway. Through the summer the alley had been crowded with chickens and lean, dirty pigs, but there were none left now⁠—apparently they had all been eaten in the three weeks’ famine.

Nothing even indirectly recalled the catastrophe, but in the empty silence of the street, so indifferent to the Governor’s passing, lay something heavy, sullen, brooding⁠—and a light cloud of incense seemed to hang in the transparent air.

“Listen!” cried the Governor suddenly, grasping his companion’s knee. “That man there⁠—”

“What man?”

The Governor did not answer. Firmly clutching his knee, he gazed at the aide with a face like a barred and shuttered house whose doors and windows have suddenly been thrown open. Then he knit his heavy grey brows, deliberately turned his ponderous back, and gazed intently out of the carriage. The horses of the guard pounded down the road, and the dismal, lonely lane, dark on one side, bright sunlight on the other, was also sunk in dreary brooding.⁠ ⁠…

Like a stampeded herd the cottages huddled together; with their riddled roofs, their broken benches, and their overhanging windows⁠—like greybeards’ chins thrust out. Then came a vacant lot, with a broken fence and an old well, sunk about the rim and boarded over; then a row of great lime-trees behind a high broken wall, and a stately old house that had drifted somehow to these wastes, but was now long since abandoned. Its shutters were closed, and on a sign could be read: “This House for Sale.” Then beyond came cottages again, and a row of brick houses⁠—large, bleak and hideous, with deep-set narrow windows. They were quite new⁠—you could still see the caked plaster lying about, and the holes where the scaffolding had been; but they were already squalid and neglected. They looked like prisons, and life in such a place must be fully as sad, as hopeless, and as narrow as a life in jail!

There is the gateway to the open fields, and the last little house⁠—no trace of vegetation about it, no fence. It stands there leaning forward, walls and roof both, as though someone had shoved it violently from behind⁠—and neither in the windows nor anywhere about a single person visible.

“After the fall rains you’ll have trouble, Peter Iljitch, getting the carriage through here. I should think you’d literally sink in the mud!”

III

Laughter and song and merry games⁠—for tomorrow Peter Iljitch’s son, the officer, returned to St. Petersburg, and friends had gathered to say goodbye. Uniforms and gay frocks were scattered about in the open glades and meadows, under the purple and gold of the autumn foliage, and in the sapphire clearness of the woodland ways. As the red wintry sunset faded and the stars moved by in the heavens, they set off fireworks⁠—rockets that burst with a loud report, star-mines and pinwheels. A stifling smoke crept under the great old trees that stood there, so earnestly watching; and when they started the Bengal lights, hurrying figures were changed to ghosts⁠—to fluttering, flitting shadows!

Commissioner “Pike,” who had pretty freely quenched his thirst at dinner, gazed indulgently at the gay throng, strutted comically about among the ladies, and enjoyed himself. And when presently he heard the Governor’s voice close beside him in the smoky darkness, he was taken with a wild desire to kiss him on the shoulder, to hug him carefully⁠—or any little thing of that kind⁠—as an expression of his devotion. Instead of this, however, he laid his hand on the left breast of his uniform, threw away a cigarette he had just lighted, and said: “Ah! your Excellency, what a charming fête!”⁠ ⁠…

“Listen, Illawion Wassiljevitch,” interrupted the Governor, with a suppressed growl. “Why do you always set these spies here? What does it mean?”

“Some rascal might plan an attack on your Excellency’s sacred person,” said the Pike, with deep emotion, and laying both hands on his heart. “And then, besides,⁠ ⁠… it is my duty!”

Popping of firecrackers, shrieks of terror, and loud laughter drowned his words. Then a sudden rain fell, extinguishing the red and green fires which had illuminated the smoky darkness, and made the Governor’s buttons and epaulets shine out.

“I know the reason, Illawion Wassiljevitch⁠—that is, I think I can guess it. But I think it can hardly be serious.”

“It is most exceedingly serious, your Excellency! The whole town is talking of it. Astonishing how busily they talk about it! I have already arrested three men⁠—but they were the wrong ones.”

A fresh outburst of firing and gay shouts interrupted him, and when the noise had subsided the Governor had gone.

After supper they all drove off, marshalled by the young Assistant Commissioner. Everything: the fireworks which he had seen from behind the trees, the carriages and the people, seemed to him extraordinarily lovely, and his own fresh voice astonished him with its beauty and its power. The Pike was horribly drunk, cracked jokes, laughed, and even sang the first few bars of the Marseillaise:

“Allons, enfants de la patrie,
Le jour de gloire est arrivé!”⁠ ⁠…

At last they had all gone. “What are you worrying about so, father?” said the lieutenant, laying his hand on Peter Iljitch’s shoulder with patronising kindliness. The Governor was very much loved by his family, and the Governor’s lady even feared him a trifle; but they all felt that he had aged sadly in these last few weeks, and their fondness was not without a tinge of contempt.

“Nonsense!